From 2002 to 2005, before reality TV ruled the earth, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles<http://www.ucla.edu/>, laboriously recruited 32 local families, videotaping nearly every waking, at-home moment during a week

And here is what they found –

mothers spend 27% of their time doing housework

fathers spend 18% of their time doing housework (not sure how this compares to same sex couples even though they were included in the study)

children spend 3% of their time doing housework (and giving allowances made no difference)

partners/husband & wives were together alone in the house about 10% of their waking time (I can so attest to this one – we have spent almost every night together in the same house since having children and I have never missed him more!)

the entire family was together in one room about 14% of the time

in spite of increasing stress levels families spent very little time in the “most soothing, uncluttered area of the home” – the backyard (I wonder where our deck figures in this calculation: inside or outside – we spend a lot of time there).

the couples with the least stress were the ones with the most rigid divisions of labour, regardless of gender equality (one father is quoted as saying “She does the inside work, and I do all the outside, and we don’t interfere” – might explain why she also is likely to be doing about one and a half times the amount of domestic labour that you are doing, buddy – not only is there less outside work but outside work tends to be less immediate and constant ie. you can leave fixing the back gate for another day but whoever is in charge of feeding the kids has to do it right now).

mothers spend 19% of their time talking with family members or on the phone

fathers spend 20% of their time talking with family members or on the phone

mothers spend 11% of their time as ‘leisure time’

fathers spend 23% of their time as ‘leisure time’

mothers spend 34% of their time alone with their children

father spend 25% of their time alone with their children (although half of the fathers spent as much, or more time as their spouse did alone with at least one child at home)

fathers were more likely to be engaged in an activity with their child while mothers were more likely to be watching TV with a child (making up for some of their lost leisure time perhaps?)

And some excellent quotes from the article to describe modern family life:

“I call it the new math,” said Kathleen Christensen of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which financed the project. “Two people. Three full-time jobs.” Parents learned on the fly, she said – and it showed.

And:

In weekly meetings, the researchers discussed what they were witnessing.

“Every time we met, I felt like I was on the defensive,” said Tamar Kremer-Sadlik, the research director, who herself has two children and a working husband. “I mean, it’s not like I approved of everything these parents were doing. But I could relate to them. I knew exactly what they were going through.”

Continual negotiations, for one. Parents generally were so flexible in dividing up chores and child-care responsibilities – “catch as catch can,” one dad described it – that many boundaries were left unclear, adding to the stress.

And:

“The coordination it takes, it’s more complicated than a theater production,” said Elinor Ochs, the U.C.L.A. linguistic anthropologist who led the study. “And there are no rehearsals.”

AND

These cortisol profiles provided biological backing for a familiar frustration in many marriages. The more that women engaged with their husbands in the evening, talking about the day, the faster their cortisol dropped. But the men’s levels tapered more slowly when talking with a spouse. (A previous generation’s solution: “cocktail hour”).

And:

Inside, the homes, researchers found rooms crammed with toys, DVDs, videos, books, exercise machines; refrigerators buried in magnets; and other odds and ends. The clutter on the fridge door tended to predict the amount of clutter elsewhere.
Outside the homes, the yards were open and green – but “no one was out there,” said Jeanne E. Arnold, a U.C.L.A. archaeologist who worked on the study. One family had a 17,000-square-foot yard, with a pool and a trampoline, and not even the children ventured out there during the study.

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16 Responses

Lily’s preschool does most of their activities outside in their beautiful garden. It’s been a great reminder to me to make sure we spend plenty of time out in ours. It definitely makes a difference to the stress/boredom levels.

(Am deliberately avoiding the negotiation etc issues, because I still need to mull over them.)

My husband and I are equal caregivers for our 9 month old son (with work being our rest days!) However I do the bulk of the cooking and housework, prepare and freeze all of the baby meals and pack the nappy bag for him before I leave for work. I’m exhausted just writing this.

It was a very interesting read. I wonder if the findings would be similar in an Australian study…surely we use our backyards more??

We’re approaching summer now in the states and spend as much time eating on the porch and letting the boys roam the yard as possible. Less cleaning up afterwards (for me!).

I too miss my husband tremendously even though we spend most post-kid-bedtimes together. Feels impossible to get back into the groove of Us in the limited time available. I have no idea how couples who claim to feel “even closer together” once having children manage that.

westwardbound: That’s a really interesting point, about “couples who claim to feel ‘even closer together’ once having children.” My husband and I certainly do–but we ALSO feel what you’re describing (missing the hell out of each other, going far too long between getting to feel “back into the groove of Us,” etc.). I hadn’t thought about how those experiences seem in tension with each other.

For us, the sense of closeness comes partly from enjoying our son together (or often not together, but jointly) and a great deal from working together through the epic adventure of pregnancy, labor, birth, the newborn days, and all the decisions and challenges and joys that have come since. We used to be able to operate pretty independently of each other, and now we’re working on a project together all the time. Also, I just LIKE and admire my partner even more now than I did when we decided to have a baby. As we know of Hermione Granger, after all, “There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.”

But that doesn’t mean I don’t wish we could chill out together more often.

Molly–I think part of our problem as a couple is that raising children (2 young, high energy, loud boys) has unearthed some of our own most unpleasant personality flaws…like major tempers and lack of patience for small things. These flaws were rarely seen or so infreqent before the instability of life before kids that they didn’t bother us. Now, they seem to get in the way.

I’m glad that for many people, like for you and your partner this doesn’t seem to happen–although I can’t imagine that my husband and I are alone in feeling stretched thin as individuals and a bit ashamed/vulnerable/angry that parenting is pushing some big buttons for us. It bums me out.

I WISH! We are all together in the same room ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Unless we go outside, in which case we are ALL OUTSIDE TOGETHER. Okay, it’s not that bad, the kids spend lots of time outside together without us. But we only have four rooms in our house, our bedroom, the girl’s bedroom, the living/kitchen/dining space and the bathroom. (And it’s not groovy and modern and open plan, it’s small and cottagey.)

Having complained about that, I think I actually subconsciously always opt for small house living. The house of my teen years was huge and ugly and suburban and we all sat in separate rooms all the time, including my parents from each other, and my Nanna too. It always seemed cold to me, and I felt like I spent half my days bouncing from one person to another, carrying messages mostly.The difference with this house is that we have an acre of garden/yard/weeds.

Makes me wish we had a garden! And yeah, still trying to avoid the reality of all the other stuff – baby is 7 months and I go back to work part time on Monday – which I am excited about, but not so much what I’ll be coming home to.

And westwardbound, you are definitely not alone in feeling that parenting can bring some negative aspects up too.

In summer and warmer months (we are in Brisbane so we get a lot of those) we spend a lot of our time outside on the deck having meals, playing etc. I also send the children outside to play and lock the doors with myself inside (does that still count)…I can still hear and see them but they can not get to me!

Oh gosh, westwardbound, I’m certainly with you on the negative exposure thing. Revealing my own lack of patience, and regularly witnessing his, definitely takes its toll…

I was also surprised by the 14% of time spent all together. The three of us are also mostly all together (although my partner does work outside the house, which cuts it down a little). Like Penni we live in a little cottage, but we also tend to follow each other from room to room (or outside) and inhabit the same smaller spaces together. Maybe this will change as Lil gets older…? She has recently started sleeping (at least part of the night) in her own bed, which certainly takes our percentages down a little.

Maureen Sullivans’s research in the US and and Gillian Dunne’s work in the UK found that lesbian couples distribute household labour much more evenly than heterosexual couples. They also found that labour related to child-rearing was divided fairly evenly and that it was difficult, in most households, to determine which mother was the child’s biological mother. In fact, Dunne found that rather than following the typical heterosexual model of the woman staying at home to raise children (if there was to be a stay at home parent) because the man earned more, lesbian couples were more likely to both restructure their work so that each worked part time of fewer hours. The higher income earner didn’t necessarily become the sole breadwinner. Food for thought for all those hetero couples who say “it just makes sense” for the man, being the higher income earner, to be the sole breadwinner.

Clearly it’s not statistically relevant, but my mother and her partner don’t reflect that study completely. My mum does more around the house because her partner earns more (and because Mum likes to cook more). However, they don’t live with kids and they pay a cleaner to come in once a week, so the burden is not as big…

[…] fact the more hours they work outside the home the less time, and importantly, energy they have for the constant negotiation and re-organisation that is required to achieve fairness inside their homes. Life happens on the run. Working mothers are probably […]